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Nexuiz Gets Forked, Turned Into Xonotic

03-22-2010, 09:30 AM

Phoronix: Nexuiz Gets Forked, Turned Into Xonotic

Nexuiz, an open-source first person shooter that we have been covering since its first release in 2005 and has turned into a game that offers impressive graphics and raises the bar for open-source gaming, has been forked by many of its core community developers. This is coming after the Nexuiz founder and others ended up agreeing to an Xbox 360 re-make deal whereby a company known as Illfonic will take the code and re-make it within a closed-source game using their own artwork, etc. With Illfonic not looking to contribute back to the GPL-licensed Nexuiz and some community members not liking this capitalist move, they have parted ways and started work on a new project...

I can understand why the community is upset... it would be one thing if the company were just selling proprietary content for Nexuiz, but if they're going to be modifying the source without having to comply with the GPL, it seems as if that would be detracting significantly from the project.

Comment

If those devs who left didn't agree, why did they give permission for this? If they contributed code, doesn't the copyright still belong to them? For this to happen, their code would have to be removed first.

Comment

If those devs who left didn't agree, why did they give permission for this? If they contributed code, doesn't the copyright still belong to them? For this to happen, their code would have to be removed first.

Maybe there was a copyright assignment policy, and the founder is now abusing it.

Comment

If those devs who left didn't agree, why did they give permission for this? If they contributed code, doesn't the copyright still belong to them? For this to happen, their code would have to be removed first.

No it wouldn't, if the copyright was attributed to the "owners" of Nexuiz. None of the contributors were consulted as far as I know. It's also iffy if any code submitted has in fact been attributed (one contributer asserted he had never seen any agreement of the sort)

The move isn't just about that either. The proprietary game got to piggy back by using the Nexuiz name with no modification, and repeated affirmation that it wouldn't be changed in any way (not even something like Nexuiz: Galactic Fight or whatever other cheesy thing you can come up with), and the proprietary game got use of the nexuiz.com domain, with original Nexuiz being pushed to http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/.

Comment

The article misses one important detail: namely, that along with the source code, the name Nexuiz and the website were also sold to IllFonic. So the project faced the choice of either changing the name or being shadowed by IllFonic's console game with its professional marketing and professionally-developed textures and maps. So to survive, the free project had to dissociate itself from IllFonic's game.

Comment

I read earlier that contributions to Nexuiz required copyright assignment...

That is not true. Every contributor has kept their copyright. What did happen is that most *engine* developers who got commit access were asked to agree to the fact that the game will be sold at some point in future. No one was told, however, that the commercial game would keep the same name.

Most of the other contributors (artists and QuakeC developers) didn't know and didn't agree to license their code.